Since very early on I developed an interest in education. During my studies I worked as afterschool teacher in math, physics, chemistry, and languages. Shortly after graduating from my MSc in Engineering I became a teacher at the School of Arts and Communication at Malmo University, Sweden. For over a decade I worked in the creation of education programmes for the university, looking at how to introduce technology transversely as part of several subjects within undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate education.

Back in 2012, I realised at the time that almost no one was addressing the needs of educators when introducing curriculum. Therefore, I decided that we had to put educators at the center of our concept and help them find creative ways to use technology in the classroom. 

As we now are approaching 2020 I am very proud of where this has taken us. 

We have managed to bring Arduino Education programs into the classrooms in a large number of countries with great success, and not least with the help from all of you — our trade partners around the world. 

We rely on you to be our faces in the market and also understand how we need to step up in our offering to make sure you are equipped to bring Arduino Education to market and give the best support to the teachers.

The Arduino Education team has been expanding the past year and we now have a strong, creative and dedicated team to make sure we deliver relevant education programs, content, training and support.

Every single day we build on our vision in wanting  to make technology accessible to everyone and put it into the hands of every student and educator.

There is still a long way to go — we are on an amazing journey and this is just the beginning. The world of technology is constantly changing and new technologies keep showing their faces. Hence why it is so very important that we work hard to make students of today aware of technology and give them confidence in working with it.

Formal education is going through a strong transformation due to the digitalization of many aspects of contemporary society. If we look at the future classroom, we see technology not just as a tool to learn about, but as a system to enhance lots of processes that currently stop us from building a better interaction between teachers, students, and their families. Technology will help us accessing knowledge in better ways right at the time we need it. Assessing the student’s learning process will be easier and more personalized. We will be able of scaling pedagogical models that schools are currently only dreaming of. It will be possible to make cross-age study groups, where students will join based on their interests. Teachers will have access to tools that will help them see at once the student’s progress and needs. Student mobility will be a matter of transferring a file between schools. 

While the future is there, a few steps ahead, we still have to walk the path. At Arduino we look forward to being your partner in reaching that future, one step at a time. 

Let us change the world by making technology accessible to everyone and put it into the hands of every student and educator.

This year, Maker Faire Shenzhen 2019 will be focusing on the theme “To the Heart of Community, To the Cluster of Industry”. With a full chain events for technological innovations, you can look forward to the Maker Summit Forum, Maker Booths (includes highlights and performances), as well as Innovation workshops. […]

Read more on MAKE

The post 3 Reasons You Should Register For Maker Faire Shenzhen Now appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.

The Arduino Certification Program (ACP) is an Arduino initiative to officially certify users at different levels and confirm their expertise in key areas. Certifications are offered at three tiers — enthusiasts, educators and professionals — which have been identified as the largest Arduino user groups through extensive feedback from the community.

And today, we are excited to announce the availability of the initial Arduino certification: Arduino Fundamentals, which is the first release of the ACP. Access to the exam leading to the certification can be purchased either in combination with the Arduino Starter Kit or as a standalone exam.

The Arduino Certification: Fundamentals Exam is a structured way to enhance and validate your Arduino skills, and receive official recognition as you progress. Anyone interested in engaging with Arduino through a process that involves study, practice, and project building is encouraged to pursue this official certificate.

Developed in consultation with leading technology curriculum, interaction design, and electronic engineering professionals, the Arduino Certification: Fundamentals Exam assesses skills based on exercises comprised of practical tasks from the Arduino Starter Kit.

The official assessment covers three main subjects: theory and introduction to Arduino, electronics, and coding. During the exam, you will be asked to answer 36 questions of varied format and difficulty in 75 minutes.

Questions will test your knowledge on the following topics:

• Electricity
• Reading circuits and schematics
• Arduino IDE
• Arduino boards
• Frequency and duty cycle
• Electronic components
• Programming syntax and semantics
• Programming logic

The certification is currently only available in the US, but will be opened in more countries during 2019. If you’d like to learn more about Arduino Fundamentals, download the user guide. Additional information can also be found here.

Aside from all the product announcements at Bett, we’re excited to unveil a new annual initiative from the Arduino Education team to keep the community up-to-date on contests and exhibitions, suggest experiments, and highlight educational products and events of relevance within a selected topic.

The Arduino Education thematic years calendar is a unique way to involve our passionate educators and students, and work together to achieve something on a much larger scale.

For 2019, we have decided to take our efforts from the classroom to outer space.

2019 Is the Year of Space

Educators from all over the world have been using space as a context to build inspirational education resources. Different space agencies, through dissemination activities, have reached out to schools and universities trying to inspire students to become the next generation of scientists and engineers. Robots, satellites the size of a soda can, radio communication systems, weather monitoring devices, maps, amongst others, are examples of projects from those who want to bring the topic of space closer to the classroom. Arduino plays a major role in this, and therefore we want to contribute to the development and dissemination of future space scientists.

A Calendar of Activities

The Arduino Education thematic year calendar is not written in stone. We, in collaboration with a series of stakeholders, suggest a point of departure, but we will welcome your contributions. Please send us your event proposals via email to space.year@arduino.cc and we will share them. If you would like to make an announcement for an upcoming workshop, event, course, or if you are looking for partners to do so in your region, we will use the Arduino forum as a public way to discuss the possibilities.

Each thematic year will see the direct involvement of the community, both in proposing/running events related to the chosen topic and to select the theme for the following year. For starters, here is a brief snapshot of planned activities in the months to come:

January

• Official announcement at BETT London
• Balloon launching in Malmö, Sweden

February

• Balloon launching in Soria, Spain with Fundación Trilema
• Arduino instrumentation course for space experiments at Luleå University of Technology (LTU), Sweden

March

• Arduino Cardboard Keyboard workshop at SXSW
• Balloon launching in Aguascalientes, Mexico
• Worldwide Arduino Day celebrations
• 2019 Arduino Education hackathon rules announcement
• First tests of the Asuro robot v2 with German Aerospace Center (DLR)

Rest of the year

• Arduino experiments at the International Space Station (ISS) with Quest Robotics
• Arduino in Space hackathon
• Moon landing anniversary party
• Astronauts and cosmonauts hangout on the beach

The Arduino Certification Program (ACP) is an Arduino initiative to officially certify Arduino users at different levels and evaluate their expertise in key Arduino knowledge areas. Certifications are offered at three tiers — enthusiasts, educators and professionals — which have been identified as the largest Arduino user groups through extensive feedback from the community.

The first step, the Arduino Certification: Fundamentals Exam, is a structured way to enhance and validate your Arduino skills, and receive official recognition as you progress. Anyone interested in engaging with Arduino through a process that involves study, practice, and project building is encouraged to pursue this official certificate.

Developed in consultation with leading technology curriculum, interaction design, and electronic engineering professionals, the Arduino Certification: Fundamentals Exam assesses skills based on exercises consisting of practical tasks from the Arduino Starter Kit.

The official assessment covers three main key areas: theory and introduction to Arduino, electronics, and coding.

During the exam, you will be asked to answer 36 questions of varied format and difficulty, which should take approximately 75 minutes to complete.

Questions will test your knowledge on, but will not be limited to, the following topics:

• Introduction to Arduino: Physical computing and Arduino, Arduino Uno, Arduino IDE and uploading, programming basics, electronics concepts, blink!, and the breadboard.
• Sensors and Actuator: Sensors, actuators, as well as digital and analog input/output.
• Input and Output Types: Using serial monitor, LEDs, motors, piezo as input/output, switches, variable resistors, IR, and PIR.

The Arduino Certification: Fundamentals Exam is currently on display at Bett 2019. Stop by stand C375 to see a demo for yourself and learn more about the program!

The Arduino Science Kit Physics Lab, developed in collaboration with Google, is the first official Arduino kit designed for middle school curriculum.

The Arduino Education Science Kit Physics Lab provides middle schoolers (ages 11 to 14) with a hands-on experience, enabling them to explore forces, motion, and conductivity with their classmates. Students can make their own hypothesis like a real scientist, then check their assumptions, and log data thanks to Google’s Science Journal app — a digital notebook for conducting and documenting science experiments using the unique capabilities of their own devices.

The kit, based on the MKR WiFi 1010, includes a range of sensors to measure light, temperature, motion, and magnetic fields, as well as a set of props and full access to online course content for teachers and students to conduct nine exciting science projects inspired by popular fairground rides like the Gravitron and Pirate Ship.

“The Arduino Science Kit is perfect for developing transferable skills such as critical thinking and problem solving through an inquiry-based learning approach. The projects featured in the kit have been aligned with several National curricula including the Next Generation Science Standard (NGSS) for K-12, and the National UK Curriculum, so teachers can be assured that the Physics Lab is not only easy to set up and fun to use, but also contains all the necessary lesson plans and physical experiments for students to actively engage with their learning.” – David Cuartielles

With the Physics Lab, no prior electronics knowledge is required. Students simply upload their sketch onto an Arduino board using Arduino Create for Chromebook, connect their Android mobile device to the board, build their project, and then use the onboard sensor and plug-and-play modules to simulate the rides’ dynamics. Data is transmitted from the experiment to the student’s mobile device via Bluetooth, where they can analyse and record their results in Google’s Science Journal App or worksheets.

The Arduino Education Science Kit Physics Lab isn’t confined to the classroom. In fact, students can use the kit outdoors to turn the playground into their very own fairground by applying the concepts they’ve learned to design and test their own rides.

The Arduino Education Science Kit Physics Lab comes in a handy storage box for later use, along with the MKR WiFi 1010 and all the parts needed to assemble and carry out the experiments. It will be coming soon to the Arduino Store and available globally starting in March 2019.

The Arduino Education team is returning to the Bett Show this week, where you can expect to find our latest products and programs for empowering students and teachers alike.

This year, we’re further strengthening our STEAM-focused offerings across the spectrum with the first-ever kit for middle schoolers, the Arduino Science Kit Physics Lab, developed in partnership with Google; the introductory module of the official Arduino Certification Program; a new addition to the Arduino Creative Technologies in the Classroom lineup, CTC GO!; and a thematic annual initiative which will kick off in 2019 with ‘Arduino and Space’ for the entire global education community.

Those visiting our stand (C375) will also have a chance to learn more about the Arduino CTC 101 program and Arduino Engineering Kit, both of are being successfully deployed in classrooms throughout the world.

Arduino and Google: A New Collaboration for Scientific Exploration

The Arduino Education Science Kit Physics Lab, our first kit targeted at middle schoolers, provides children ages 11 to 14 with a  hands-on experience, enabling them to explore forces, motion, and conductivity with their classmates. Students can form their own hypothesis like a real scientist, then check their assumptions, and log data thanks to Google’s Science Journal app — a digital notebook for conducting and documenting science experiments using the unique capabilities of their own devices.

The kit, based on the MKR WiFi 1010, features a range of sensors to measure light, temperature, motion, and magnetic fields; plus it comes with a set of props and full access to online course content for teachers and students to conduct nine exciting science projects inspired by popular fairground rides like the Gravitron and Pirate Ship.

Take Your Arduino Skills to the Next Level and Become Certifie

The Arduino Certification: Fundamentals Exam is a structured way to enhance and validate  your Arduino skills, and receive official recognition as you progress. Anyone interested in engaging with Arduino through a process that involves study, practice, and project building is encouraged to pursue this official certificate.

Developed in consultation with leading technology curriculum, interaction design, and electronic engineering professionals, the Arduino Certification: Fundamentals certification assesses skills based on exercises consisting of practical tasks from the Arduino Starter Kit.

The official assessment covers three main key areas: theory and introduction to Arduino, electronics, and coding.

Ready, Set, GO!

CTC GO! is the newest member of Arduino’s Creative Technologies in the Classroom lineup. The program consists of a series of modules which can be combined to teach various STEAM subjects to fit with different educational paths.

The core module — which is the foundation of CTC GO! — is now available, while an assortment of expansion modules will be launched sequentially from 2019 to 2021. These include a motion module, a wireless module, and math module, all of which will contain new materials, content, and educators training / support.

CTC GO! has been designed around the recently announced Arduino Uno WiFi, our most powerful board for education. The board maintains the simplicity of the standard Uno with the incorporation of WiFi so students can learn about wireless technology and begin creating their own IoT projects.

Through the project-based learning (PBL) methodology, CTC GO! introduces students to basic concepts via a series of playful, well-documented projects and easy-to-assemble experiments.

CTC GO! also provides premium training and support for educators through online videos, webinars, and expert-answered emails.

Space: The Next Frontier of Education

The human exploration of space has inspired endless projects within the STEAM community, many of which leveraging the Arduino platform. David Cuartielles, Arduino Co-Founder and Education CTO, took the Bett stage (Post 16 Theatre) on Wednesday morning to discuss innovative ways to engage students inside (and outside) the classroom.  

This session showcased the work of master students from the Space Department at Sweden’s Lulea University and their machines that extract water from the cold air of Mars; educational robots from the German Space Agency (DLR); and CanSats made by K12 students in Aguascalientes, Mexico, among others. During the talk, David and Electronic Cats CanSat’s Andres Sabas shared how they were able to get college students to program and launch 40 small satellites using open source hardware and aerostatic balloons.

Back in May, the Arduino team ran a physical computing workshop as part of the summer school program organized by the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design. Each workshop was taught in the context of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The one-week long class focused on designing physical and interactive objects that can help kids understand the building blocks of the digital world and its foundation (e.g. the binary system, barcodes, RGB colors, digital images, digital sounds, programming, laser printing…) in an experiential and playful way.

Italian pedagogues have, at different stages, imagined innovative learning approaches where children are the center of their own learning process through a direct experience of phenomena and concepts applicable in the real world, which is a radical departure from the classic lecture-based system.

To implement this active and experiential learning approach they also designed tools that help children discover abstract concepts through play like, for example, the Montessori Pink Tower to introduce the concept of scale and the decimal system, or the tactile workshops by Bruno Munari to explore the sense of touch and textures.

In the XXI century, human experiences are increasingly mediated by digital tools, and the world we live in is going through a radical digital transformation which requires a deeper understanding of its complexity. To make this world more accessible, we need to encourage children to understand how these digital tools work and enable them to become active citizens of the future, rather than passive learners.

A handful of playful and engaging experiences have been designed by the students, which will allow children to understand a specific technology, such as how solar panel works, how to express colors in binary language, how RFID tags are able to activate objects, and even identify the principle behind accelerometers that we use everyday in video games controllers.

Arduino All Over

With the arrival of Spring, just prior to the ending of the academic year in Spain, teachers and education initiatives have been celebrating STEAM events all over the country. I personally attended RoboCampeones in Fuenlabrada, a small city outside Madrid, but there were a lot more: Robolot, FanTec, Cantabrobot, Granabot, ROByCAD, and even the technology and education conference PR3D.

Arduino has been present in all of the above-mentioned events, as reported by many of the students, teachers, parents, regional representatives, and distributors, that were on hand. I had the opportunity of interviewing a whole lot of students at RoboCampeones as well as Victor, one of the organizers of many of the 15 editions of the event, and Mati, a teacher from one of the schools participating.

Since the interviews were in Spanish and while I consider putting some work in making the subtitles to the videos, I have already published some of the interviews to the  Arduino EDU LiveCast playlist, which you could find here.

This is the interview made to Victor, the main organizer. In one sentence he said that RoboCampeones is the largest event of its type in Spain (CTC Catalunya 2018 had more students, but not coming from all over the country as in RoboCampeones).

Mati, from the IES Sefarad in Toledo, comments about here experience and about how much students get motivated in making better projects year after year.

Robocampeones in Numbers

2018’s RoboCampeones represents the 15th edition of the event. It has not always been in Fuenlabrada, as it was an itinerating event for a while, and it has not always been having so much Arduino involved. In Victor’s words, it started as a Lego competition, but in 2011 through the intervention of Mati and her college Julio from the IES Sefarad school in Toledo, RoboCampeones added the “open category” to the competition. This category was not only opening up for the participants to use other technologies in the competition (which consisted of the traditional sumo, line following, and rescue challenges), but also brought in a couple of years later the possibility for students to present whatever project they had done in a faire-like environment.

This year’s event had 2,000 participants, plus 1,000 kids that came just to watch. This is, in my opinion, an interesting trend that I have seen at the CTC Faires as well: not only do kids come to showcase their projects or to compete in challenges of different nature, they also come to see what others have done. It is certainly fun to observe some of the projects, see the robots fight on the tatami, and engage in endless conversations about how this or that has been built.

There were over 100 projects in the open category, which took a substantial portion of Fuenlabrada’s Fernando Martin basketball court (where the event took place), 176 Arduino sumo robots, and more than 20 different prizes. You can check out the pictures taken by one of our historical moderators to the Spanish forum and contributor to many open projects in Spain, Juan Manuel Amuedo aka @ColePower.

The Competition

At RoboCampeones, participants compete in getting the most points from the audience, in addition to being the best in the competition. The 2018 edition included a special challenge where teams had to build and command two teleoperated robots (using Bluetooth from cell phones) to compete in moving a certain amount of colored balls from the center to a corner of a squared tatami. Just imagine two teams, two robots per team (thus four players) and 16 balls of different colors rolling on the tatami… messy and fun at the same time!

The other categories were: sumo, rescue, 3D printing, and the open category. I was invited to deliver the prize to the best Arduino project in the open category based on my opinion (yes, I had the chance to judge for a project all by myself!). It was a hard competition, something you can see from the videos. I loved a candy delivering box made by a bunch of 11-year-old kids from Jaen, the eco-friendly shower by three girls from the region, or the funny robot head for dancing at events by yet another couple from Madrid. However, if I have to choose a project that displays excellence in its execution, I voted for the solar airplane-drone designed to fly with a 2kg cargo. It had two different Arduino boards controlling different parts of the operation of the drone: telemetry + flight control, and battery management. They made their own PCBs, installed telemetry equipment, and even implemented a text to speech mechanism so that anyone with a walkie-talkie in the 433Mhz band could connect to the drone and listen to it saying aloud all of the sensor data. See here the interview I made to Julian, one of the boys in the team.

The Trick: Open Your Lab After Lunch

When asking teachers and students how they managed to get so many incredibly relevant projects made during the formal education time, I got a uniform response from them: you (teacher) need to change you class’ methodology and follow PBL centred one. Furthermore, the lab needs extra opening hours. According to the educators, kids demand the technology class (or dedicated lab) to be opened after lunch time, once the class-day has come to an end, for them to continue experimenting and building their projects. Different schools figured out different ways to make it happen: teachers spend some administration hours sitting in the lab and let the kids do, teachers delegate responsibility in older students that want to volunteer and help their schoolmates, the lab management was included in the school’s library management that had to be opened anyway, etc.

This is again something we have experienced with CTC. Technology needs to become much more transversal and become part of different subjects, labs have to be open longer, we need to re-think the management of creative spaces at schools, and the school management has to integrate these activities as part of the overall pedagogic plan of the school. Technology is an important part of our lives, and at school it has to play the same role and have resources at the same level as gymnastics, physics, or other classes in the need for experimental settings.

Other Events

There were other events happening throughout Spain over the last couple of weeks. The following list should give you an idea as to how relevant empirical technology classes are becoming:

• Robolot: A two-day robotics festival now in its 17th edition, which took place in Olot, and included robotics competition, a STEAM area, had workshops, lectures, and other side events.
• FanTec: The technology teachers association from Andalucia celebrated the 3rd edition of their faire at the Faculty of Telecommunications and Informatics at the University of Malaga. They have an extensive program with a long selection process, prizes, and visits to museums. 
• ROByCAD: Cadiz, also in Andalucia, hosted its first robotics day on May 25th. 
• Granabot: Once more in Andalucia, a couple of enthusiast teachers arranged two days of activities including Arduino Day. 
• Cantabrobot: In northern Spain, a small robotics festival in Colindres, Cantabria gathered 700 enthusiasts.

To the question of who paid for all of these, typically teachers arrange the events on a volunteer basis, get donated spaces from the regional or local governments, prizes contributed by companies, and sometimes even received grants to help those having to travel long distances to participate in the event.

Credits 

All the images featured in this blog are courtesy of ColePower. 

Maker Faire Bay Area is here! Get a sneak peek at all the must-see exhibits and creators. We'll be updating this post regularly throughout the weekend, so check back regularly.

Read more on MAKE

The post Live Updates From Maker Faire Bay Area 2018 appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.